


Lost Causes

by amindamazed (hophophop)



Category: Elementary (TV)
Genre: Community: holmestice, Drug Addiction, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, impact of addiction on friends/family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-28
Updated: 2015-05-28
Packaged: 2018-04-01 15:29:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4025143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hophophop/pseuds/amindamazed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>"...I think you know a lost cause when you see one."</em><br/>The third time Holmes relapsed, Joan was unconscious, getting three pins set in her shoulder after she collided with a baseball bat aimed at his head.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lost Causes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cathedral_carver](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cathedral_carver/gifts).



> Happy Holmestice, cathedralcarver! I took you at your word for enjoying angst, dark, and unhappy endings...

The first time Holmes relapsed, undone by a single day of Hemdale’s drab two-star hotel furnishings and stultifying interactions, Joan was observing an improv class. She was three weeks into what would turn out to be her simplest assignment as a sober companion. April Villas was 24 and wanted to be an actress; her teens had been peppered with diet pills and keg parties, graduating to cocaine and vodka shots in college, and the belief that drugs helped strip away pretense and gave her work honesty and depth. Her roommate’s overdose and her own near miss were a wake-up call, and April committed to recovery easily. Joan accompanied her through the steady round of meetings, earnest conversations, tearful confessions, and gradual progression to self-sufficiency. Joan told herself she’d feel more engaged with someone older, next time. She hadn’t been bored, exactly. She wouldn’t say that. Just…she wanted a little more…something. Something different. And that’s why she liked this job. Every few weeks, there would be something different.

The second time Holmes relapsed, Joan was holding Alfredo’s hand while they waited for the ambulance, steadying him as he eased down to sit against the exterior wall of the warehouse where he’d been held. He’d insisted they take him outside the moment the tape was pulled from his mouth, his voice a rough croak. They’d barely cut his limbs free before he pushed up and out of the chair, legs almost buckling under him. “Can’t breathe,” he gasped, gripping Joan’s hand as she tried to help him balance. “Need to get out—“ They stumbled together through the locker door, and Alfredo released a long shuddering breath when he saw the wide open entrance and the overcast sky.

A uni jogged around the corner with the water bottle she’d had in her car. She twisted the top off and passed it to Joan. “I already drank from it,” she said apologetically, “but there’s still half left…”

“Thanks; this will help until the EMTs get here. Just a sip, Alfredo. You have to take it slowly.” She held it out but his swollen fingers couldn’t grip it, so she squatted down next to him, balancing with one hand resting lightly on his shoulder, and held the water to his mouth for a brief swallow. She heard a faint siren in the distance and pushed away the thought of her too-quiet phone. Sherlock would reply to the news that they’d found Alfredo as soon as he could. “We’ll get you hydrated and patched up, Alfredo,” Joan said. “It’s going to be all right.”

The third time Holmes relapsed, Joan was unconscious, getting three pins set in her shoulder after she collided with a baseball bat aimed at his head. They’d let themselves into the Wilfred brothers’ apartment, which turned out not to be as vacant as they thought. George Wilfred attacked with the bat, but Joan tripped George, took the hit instead, and crumpled to the floor. Before Holmes could reach her, Jay Wilfred came from behind and punched the back of his skull with a sledge-hammer fist. Holmes came to with Joan’s yell as Jay shoved her against the table and torqued her injured arm up behind her back, demanding to know where the witness was hiding. Holmes staggered toward them, dizzy from his concussion, and the contents of his stomach almost reached Jay before he did. His body check threw them both away from her, across the room to slam into the exposed brick wall. Holmes used the momentum to hurl himself back at George. One of the kitchen chairs broke over George’s head, who swore, stumbled, and lurched out the back door, pulling his dazed brother with him. Holmes dropped the chair leg he didn’t remember picking up and rushed to Joan.

She spent three days in the hospital but her shoulder was too swollen for surgery so they sent her home with a brace and an OxyContin prescription she worried about having in the house. He pretended not to notice the painkiller or her concern, fussed with bringing her meals and Clyde and other diversions, and informed her he was keeping tally of her share of the chores he was doing. The Wilfreds remained at large and the witness at risk, but he didn’t correct her assumption that they’d been caught after the fight. Instead he worked the case when she slept. By the time Joan went back for the surgery to stabilize her shoulder, he’d been awake the better part of a week.

That morning of her surgery, there had been dark circles under her eyes and two kinds of pain in the stiff way she rested her neck against the pillows. “My first time on this side of the knife,” she’d said, her voice catching as she avoided eye contact. He’d stood at the foot of her bed and ground his teeth with the effort not to fidget. He didn’t know what to reply. (The inanity, “You’ll do fine” on the tip of his tongue which he bit instead).

At the time he fully expected to wait through the surgery and be there when she left recovery. A rather ironic turn of phrase, under the circumstances. In the utterly bland waiting room, it had become impossible to disregard the hallucinations that danced in his peripheral vision or the incessant noise and barrage of human and pharmaceutical odors surrounding him. He couldn’t stay still while the Wilfreds waited for their next chance to strike back. The sensation of raw exposure finally drove him out, to the streets and the compulsion that simultaneously solved everything and shattered it. Again.

He could no longer deny his decreasing capability and increasing anxiety that the brothers would return to get what they wanted. Later he understood that his paranoia was a function of concussion and sleep deprivation, but on that day the only possibility that presented itself to finish the job was a line of cocaine that snapped through his brain and body, galvanizing him with exhilaration and purpose.

He’d forgotten the clarity that lightning bolt could ignite. Vivid awareness and the acuity to manage it. The hubris that he would be able to manage it. Hubris, full stop. He deduced the Wilfreds’ location, got them into police custody, and accompanied the witness to the hearing. When the case was finally out of his hands, he checked in at the hospital to be told by a groggy post-op Joan he looked awful and should go home and get some sleep. And so he went home, cleaned the refrigerator, and reorganized the computer closet in the media room to the blasting bedlam of death metal until 5 a.m. Then he crashed for two days.

He was too ashamed to return to the hospital, poorly excused by a half-truth about being called in to handle a legal matter related to their attackers. When she was discharged, she went to stay with her mother for the first week. Continued indulgence of his disgrace could not be tolerated, and he visited each day to update her on work, commiserate silently with both Watson women on the intransigence of the other, and not mention the meetings he attended each morning before he arrived or the daily check-ins with his sponsor. Joan returned to the brownstone and spent the second week increasingly frustrated with the slow pace of healing and generally living up to the standard epithet applied to doctors as patients. He brought her some cold cases, and that helped until she developed bronchitis in week three and went back on antibiotics and then couldn’t keep anything down.

Her attitude improved when she was finally cleared for physical therapy in week four. Three times a week, and they left together, he to attend a meeting nearby which he didn’t attempt to conceal and apparently raised no flags for her. He usually finished first, so he’d collect coffee or tea and meet her after her appointment. This day, her fifth session, she emerged from the changing room, hair pulled up and damp at the base of her neck. She gave him a nod and started to engage the receptionist, as usual. He interrupted, cardboard tray of drinks in one hand and her coat in the other, a slight bounce in his step. “I already confirmed your next appointment. I noticed a cluster of solitary bee nests close to one of the benches in the park; we could take the tea there?”

Joan smiled at his eagerness to get to the bees. It had been a good session; she finally felt like she might eventually get her full range of motion back. “All right. It’ll be nice to sit outside for a bit.”

He led the way and left her to settle on the bench with her cup while he first bent at the waist and then squatted down to peer at the tiny holes drilled into the tree’s thick bark. He pulled out his phone and attached the macro lens to take a few photographs before coming back to sit next to her. “Need better magnification to attempt identification.”

“What, you don’t have all the species memorized yet?” It was almost ten years since he’d named one of them after her, and she’d grown quite fond of his attachment to bees. She leaned back against the bench and closed her eyes in the sun. Her shoulder ached, but it felt like a useful pain, not the hot weight of the first few weeks. It felt good.

The bench vibrated under her, and she turned to look. Holmes sat ramrod straight and stilled his bouncing knee, lips pursed as he stared at, or perhaps past, the flock of pigeons scratching the newly seeded grass. He slowly slipped his right hand into his coat pocket and pulled it out, thumb pinched behind his fingers, and then stretched his arm out toward her. He paused at the half-way point, took a deep breath, and extended his arm the rest of the way, fingers still pinched shut.

“What is it?”

“It’s… Something I want you to know.”

She frowned, confused. “Is this part of a case?” She held out her hand under his. “What—“ The small bright disk dropped into her palm. She recognized it but didn’t understand.

“I received that today.”

It slid through her fingers when her hand started to shake, and hit the cement under the bench with a faint ping, bouncing to land next to her foot. A 30-day chip.

The bench seemed to tilt under her, and she pushed against the seat with her palm to steady it. She was out of practice, that was the problem. Years since she’d last been someone’s sober companion, seven years since her partner — her friend — relapsed, and more than twenty since the first time with Liam. There’d been so many after that first one. It had taken her a long time to give up hope, then. To let go. But this was different. She wasn’t the same person she’d been then. Sherlock wasn’t Liam. It couldn’t be the same. She wouldn’t have to do that again. She felt her chin tremble and bit her lip to stop it. She was out of practice, but this wasn’t the time for her. This wasn’t about her.

“Okay,” she said. She started to bend down to pick it up, not thinking about her shoulder, and hissed when the muscles pulled. He put out his hand to block her, and when she slowly straightened again he reached down and carefully returned it to his pocket. “Okay,” she said again. She clenched her fists and pressed them into her body, one against the side of her thigh, and the one in the sling against her diaphragm. There was something she should say, but she couldn’t find the script. She cleared her throat. “You okay?”

“I am fine.” He tipped his head to the side, avoiding eye contact. He thought he was ready to see the expression on her face, but not quite. Not yet. “Thirty days fine.”

She stared at the pigeons, scratching and pecking and intermingling. One of the males puffed up and chased off another that got too close. “Do you want to talk about it?” Yes, that was the line.

He patted his pocket. “I have been talking about it.” Her breath came out a little too heavy at that; he certainly heard it, but could he tell her if what she felt was disappointment or relief?

“Okay.” Okay, okay, okay, the word echoed in her mind, and she blinked quickly to clear the tears threatening to betray her. She should have seen it, realized the violence of the attack and her absence—

“And you, Watson? Are you ‘okay’ with this?”

“I— It’s got nothing to do with me,” but he scoffed and scowled at the pigeons. “Sorry. I’m surprised. I didn’t have any idea. Obviously.” She felt foolish not to have realized she’d have to do this again. Of course she would. But her inexcusable naiveté didn’t justify his irritation, and she snapped, “I thought you just wanted to obsess over bees. Give me a minute.”

“Yes, certainly, you’re right. I apologize.” He looked down at his hands. “That is in fact the point of this little tableau. I made an error, a series of errors, and I am now attempting to rectify the situation to the best of my ability.” He reached back into his pocket and pulled out the chip, slowly turning it over and over. “There are several reasons I didn’t tell you earlier, but I hoped you might find assurance in this proof of my commitment to the process.”

She took a slow shaky breath and hoped he didn’t sense the trembling in her chest. What was she thinking. He could hear helicopters landing on a roof ten floors up.

“Okay.”

In an effort to claim a modicum of control over her life, Joan pushed too hard in the days that followed, overdoing her shoulder exercises to the point that the physical therapist sent her home under strict orders to rest it for a week. It was so sore she couldn’t find a comfortable position, not that it mattered much as she wasn’t sleeping very well anyway. Given the circumstances she wouldn’t have anything stronger than ibuprofen in the house, and if her useless anxieties didn’t keep her awake, the pain would.

Nothing changed at the brownstone except her perception of it. Sherlock came and went as before, although now she knew what half of those excursions were. She tried to believe she knew. He brought her a tray in the morning and bounced ideas off her as they arose, just as he had almost every day of the past ten years. He called out unintelligible observations from two floors down and texted her if she didn’t reply. He opened jars she couldn’t manage one-handed and consulted her on experiments with Clyde, and only made Yorkshire puddings once. He was normal, Sherlock-normal. She hadn’t been this far from Joan-normal since… Well, since the year before his relapse. The other relapse. (There were relapse ** _s_** now.)

Although she understood it was important to him to see it that way, Joan didn't consider using drugs the day he entered Hemdale as a relapse in the usual sense. But the time after that, yes. In retrospect she could see he’d been flirting with it for well over a year. Starting with Alistair’s death, actually, and circling around and around until Oscar showed up, and Sherlock followed him down. But there had been signs, then, and she wasn’t taken by surprise, not really. Addicts relapse after all, and then some of them pick themselves back up again and continue where they left off. Which he had. For whatever reason, and there were several things distracting her that year, she didn't second-guess it. Any of it. And as the years went by, somehow some ridiculous part of her came to believe that was it, that neither of them would have to face this ever again. But here it was, and she had to admit she wasn’t handling it well. She should have known better. She used to know better. What about the next time? What would she do then?

She sat up in bed, back hunched over and rocking a bit in the futile attempt to evade the pain in her neck and back, palms pressed against her eyes. Her breath came too fast, and she couldn’t catch up until she was startled by the voice at the door she’d forgotten to close. Well, forgotten on purpose, more like, the better to keep track of where he was in the house. To be sure he _was_ in the house. She had to be sure and not miss anything, not again. But here he was, and unlike her, he didn’t miss. “Stop, Watson. Stop and breathe. Just breathe and be here, now.”

She coughed a laugh because of all the things she never expected to hear from Sherlock Holmes, hippie platitudes were _way_ off the chart.

He suppressed his smile, eyes serious. “I’ll not take up chanting or walking in circles but there's wisdom in the philosophy. Right now, you are not enabling me, and I am not using. Right now you are in pain, your shoulder of course but also your low back on the opposing side, having to compensate for the imbalance your injury brings. Right now I can smell the coffee downstairs in the kitchen — can you? It’s starting to burn. We’ve got starlings nesting in the eaves, and Mrs. Kal's nephew is smoking on his fire escape. Now that's a bad habit. Right now you are holding tension in your jaw. Is that necessary? Let it go, Watson.” He entered the room as he spoke, and carefully eased himself to perch on the corner of her bed. Another unusual move; she could count on one hand the number of times he’d crossed that threshold.

His steady slow breaths were an anchor, but her anxiety kept tugging her own to a faster rhythm. She didn't want him to see, didn't want any witness to her breakdown, but she didn't have the strength to push him away. She squeezed her eyes shut so she wouldn't have to see her weakness be known. She couldn't roll away, couldn't lie face down, couldn't hide. She ground her teeth harder, trying to stop the trembling in her face, the break that was coming. "Don't—" she said, and the bed dipped when he got up from the edge and walked away, and she felt loss and relief all at once. Then the room grew dim as he closed the shutters one by one, and a sliver of tension slipped away in the soothing darkness she could see through closed lids. She kept her eyes closed and sensed he remained by the windows, gradually hearing the soft susurrus of shirt sleeve against waistcoat as he fidgeted with something. A moment later soft low cello notes, and he stepped closer to set his phone on the chair by her bed.

"I find Arvo Pärt's compositions remarkably versatile despite their simplicity, but if this isn't to your liking...?"

The gentle cascade of piano trailed behind, slow steps she could take one by one, guided by the continuous strings. The pressure of tears on the verge of release remained, but the constriction in her chest eased. She gave a small shake of her head. "No," and he moved closer to take it up again. "No, I mean, it is. To my liking. Leave it. Please. It's—" She swallowed, and she could open her eyes without breaking apart. "It's good." He pressed his lips in acknowledgment and gave a curt nod before turning away again toward the slices of afternoon light outlining the dark shutter slats. She saw his chest rise in silhouette and sink back in a slow exhale, not quite in sync with the music. Her own breathing slowed as she listened, and tears slid silently and easily down her face. When the piece ended, she pulled the edge of the sheet up with her good hand to wipe her cheeks dry, and he didn't move until she finished. The next piece started, still calm but not so sweet and sad, and she felt settled, almost. Or at least less lost in old fears and a bit more here, now. He shifted his head toward her and looked away again before he spoke.

"I shouldn’t—“ He sighed. “This is not about me, of course, but I know you would rather things not be about you, so... Thank you. For allowing me to…assist you. It helps me, with.... It helps.”

"Penance," she said in recognition.

"No!" and she blinked at his vehemence, pushing back a bit on the pillow. "No," he repeated with quiet earnestness. "Helping you. Caring for you. That can never be penance, Watson. It's no punishment or duty. I know it's not always something you want. It is, however, what I have to offer at the moment, and I am grateful when you are able to accept it."

She frowned slightly and gave a resigned nod, yet another layer of pain shadowing her face even as the earlier tension released. For the first time it occurred to him that it might not be his doing, in the end. She was so strong, but if this disease had taught him anything, it was that such determination was dangerous. If you couldn’t bend, if you couldn’t yield to unbearable pressure, you would break. They would break.

The first time she concealed her wounds from him, Holmes ferreted it out of her thirty seconds after they met. The next dozen-dozen times she hid, he responded in a variety of ways: letting her have her way; badgering her to speak; intervening unasked; running away himself. He didn’t truly comprehend what it was about, why she was so afraid to reveal any possible weakness, and why she perceived her own human frailty to be so shameful in the first place. Obviously some of it was rooted in her identity and the ways it differed from his and the ways the world interpreted her. But she was raised by loving parents in a supportive home. Yes, one parent suffered from a debilitating illness that affected his ability to relate to her and to reality. And perhaps that was the crux of the problem, which Liam reinforced with his addiction. And now. Holmes sighed. It may be that she would never be able to trust him, because at her core she believed that the world, and the flawed people within it, and herself most of all, could not be trusted. The essential unreliability and frailty of humanity the reason she worked so hard to hide her own.

In the end, perhaps, it wouldn’t matter why.

He heard her shift against the linens, her breath finally slowing unevenly toward sleep. His own shoulder suddenly twinged as it did from time to time, even ten years after. Moriarty’s imprint would never leave him. He hoped he was resilient enough not to let that scar limit his choices. He hoped Watson would continue to find reasons to stay.

The playlist restarted, and the carefully paced piano notes moved forward in the muted afternoon light, supported by the long fragile exhale of the cello. He hoped.

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to [beanarie](http://archiveofourown.org/users/beanarie/works) and [nairobiwonders](http://archiveofourown.org/users/nairobiwonders/works) for their insightful and supportive beta.
> 
> The music Sherlock and Watson listen to at the end is the album _Alina_ by Arvo Pärt, which contains 3 versions of the piece "Spiegel im Spiegel" and 2 versions of "Für Alina." "Spiegel im Spiegel" is the one described in this fic. (multiple versions of both available on this [youtube playlist](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0Uf4Zjjs2SjRimlo-hXO5PR7Kbk6nBKD))


End file.
